Awaiting My Vocation (Being Single Series)

I liked reading Emily's post because I think us single ladies often get caught up in the idea of, "Well, once I meet my Prince Charming and we fall in love, we'll get married right away and have super cute babies!!!!" which means we forget the whole dating and engagement time are still part of the single vocation! Emily's experiences are a good reminder to live on God's timing. Even if we know our vocation, sometimes we still have to be patient.

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I've been engaged for exactly 367 days. Yep, you heard that right. It's been an entire year of this engagement process. I can’t exactly say my patience has been cooperating with me (it hasn’t), and I can’t say that this journey was easy (it wasn’t), but I can say that it has taught me to appreciate my time of being single before I say I do.

Being single is that time to really think about your vocation. Married life? Single life? Religious life? At my high school we had a class dedicated solely to vocations. Discernment is a tough process, especially at high school age! For some reason, I always knew I wanted to be married and be a mother. I prayed about it a lot when I was younger. When I finally met the man I knew I wanted to marry, I wanted to start living my vocation RIGHT NOW.

Clearly that didn’t happen. We still had 21 months left of being single people. We had 21 months left of not being “One” with God. We had 21 months left of being apart, not seeing each other, and talking little during the day. But we also had 21 months left of being single people and living out that vocation for that part of our lives.

Waiting to be married meant that I can learn to appreciate the little things I may not have when I’m married. As excited as I am to be married to my love, many things will change for me. I’m learning to enjoy what I have now and to still be excited for the future at the same time.

Even if you know what you are called to do, having patience on getting there and praying to God for guidance is the best thing you can do. Waiting to live out your vocation is tough (believe me, I know!), but God is really trying to teach you something! God is teaching me patience as I am waiting (8 more months!) for our wedding. He’s teaching me to appreciate the time I do have with my fiancé because even when we are married we both will have busy schedules. He’s teaching me to be a more compassionate person.

While waiting that strenuous wait to truly live out your vocation, think of the things that you are learning from God in the process. The single life isn’t the easiest thing, but there’s a reason why we wait 20-something years to really start living out what we’re called to do. Even if the single life is for you, it still takes a lot of prayer and contemplating. Believe me; God knows what He’s doing!

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Emily is a 20-something almost-Catholic who is from Ohio. She blogs about her wedding planning, conversion, and weight-loss over at Day in the Life. She cannot wait to be married to her love on May 4 next year!